This short follows a day of work for an Everglades wildlife trapper catching animals for zoos around America. In this film, his assignment is to go out into the swamp with his Indian assistant and find a bobcat, 2 black bear cubs and six rattlesnakes.
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I am a huge MST3k fan... In fact, what sent me here tonight was a 2am viewing of Teenage Caveman, the episode which contains this short subject. I almost always hate reading the comments of MST source material because 90% are filled with people who regurgitate the mst jokes and try to pass the viewpoints of the mst crew as their own. Let's take a step back from our hypersensitivity to political correctness and go back in time 80+ years to the spring/summer of 1936. The Baseball hall of fame opened with it's first inductees including Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. Ferdinand Porche's new Volkswagen hit the streets. Jesse Owens set the 100 meter record. "Gone With the Wind" is first published. The Nazis run the Olympic torch through the US in preparation for the 1936 Summer Olympics. Hitler violates the treaty of Versailles by invading Rhineland. Cars were in the cities, but in rural America, people rode horses, used outhouses and read by candlelight. Women had only been voting for 18 years by this point, but race restrictions would remain for another 10. The elderly were children during the civil war and had first hand knowledge of slavery. TV was only a few years old. Most listened to the radio for entertainment. For an American male, seeing another country probably meant that you fought in the great war 20 years ago. The way most people saw the world, or even distant parts of the country like the Everglades, was by watching short subjects like this in a movie theater. The point of this history lesson is that the world was a different place. In 1936, kids played cowboys and Indians. Husing introduced Ross and "his faithful Seminole Indian guide", which he later abbreviated to "his Semanole" in a bid to play into the cool factor of the guy being a "real" American Indian. For the period, that wasn't a racist remark any more than "my boyfriend Ross" was a homosexual remark.So, please, park your white guilt and just take this short for what it is. An interesting slice of the 1930s that didn't age well.
a rare gem of filmography, this peek into the -not to distance past -shows what life was like in the wilderness of America's coastal swamps.Ross is a role model for todays youth on how to enjoy the outdoors like a real American should.his courage and skill is second to none when it comes to animal capture and handling techniques.as a zoo capture team Ross and Ole sourpuss fill the bill for many of a big city zoos. in short Ross is one tough sob. doing all this and filming it too; if you liked this film check out IMDb for his other work also view" hatari" or "jacare"or " naked prey"or any films by osa and martin johnson.hope you enjoy" catching trouble" as much as i did .well gotta go feed my seminole.
It's easy for us to make fun of short little clips like "Catching Trouble" 50 years down the line, of course. Viewers watching our mainstream output 50 years from now will roll their eyes (or their cybernetic optic implants, whatever) at things like "American Idol", "Grey's Anatomy", "CSI" or "Law And Order" in the exact same way...and God only knows what they will make of "X Files." So the biggest problem is that this clip simply didn't age well. Also part of the problem here is that "my boyfriend" Ross has no camera appeal at all and no one on the film crew seems to have coached him on how to read a line on camera. (They probably just wanted to shoot some footage and get the hell out of the swamp!) He's certainly intrepid enough as he matter-of-factly goes about catching wild animals that could easily wound, maim or kill him if they had the chance, and he doesn't seem to want to hurt or scare them. The animals are just a way of paying the bills. You don't see cattle farmers or pig farmers getting sentimental or sadistic about their "cash crops", do you? And neither does Ross. Still, this is pretty grating to modern sensibilities, what with the patronizing narrator's comments about "Old Sourpuss", etc. Someone making a short like this today would be burned at the stake by the SPCA.
For those who think the '50s are something we should get back to, who don't like the concepts supposedly described in the shapeless term "political correctness," well here's a movie to love and cherish.No one has yet noticed the racial aspects of this short. Let's talk about the Seminole - he doesn't apparently have a name, he is known as "Old Sourpuss" or worse, "his (Ross's) Seminole." Excuse me, "HIS SEMINOLE?" I guess the idea that possessing a person of another race is not admirable thing to do hadn't filtered down to southern Florida at the time. Anyway, Old Sourpuss goes around the swamp in his tribal costume, which to be honest looks more like a woman's dress than a Scottish kilt does. I suspect the Seminoles are aware of this, and save the outfit for ceremonial occasions. But the director probably said, "Hey, Sourpuss! Why don't you put on your traditional dress -er costume! That will really show our audience the white guy is in charge!" Ross captures a cougar, and upon reaching his little facility puts it into a glass-sided box about the size of a cat carrier. "Home sweet home," the narrator says. Yes, I'm sure wild cougars feel so safe and comforted in a small box that smells of the last abducted animal that was thrown in there. Then something else no one seems to have noticed. Ross is shown hauling away twin bear cubs, whose pitiful cries should have even the most animal-apathetic wanting to throw something large and heavy at Ross. May I be the one to ask the obvious question: WHERE IS THE MOTHER BEAR? And don't tell me the cubs were orphaned by a forest fire just before the movie. We must assume there is more to the incident that wasn't filmed, that *really* makes Ross look despicable and which even this thick as a brick filmmaker realized audiences would not enjoy watching.And let's not mention the obviously staged escape attempt of one of the cubs.Yes, brutality against wildlife and unmistakable assertions of a racial caste presented for light viewing. The '50s, you can keep them.